


When Excuses Fail

by Kendrickhier



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Self-Loathing, headcanon fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 07:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrickhier/pseuds/Kendrickhier
Summary: Astra opens up to Alex about the truth behind her uniform, particularly why she is still wearing it now, after living outside of Fort Rozz for over a year now.





	When Excuses Fail

“What’s with the suit?”

Astra looks up from her book with a frown. They’d been sitting on the couch together in silence for nearly an hour, both of them reading their respective literature—Pride and Prejudice for Astra, to get acquainted with the classics, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for Alex, one of her personal classics. Alex is watching her, and Astra can’t help but wonder how long she’s been staring. “Pardon?”

“Your suit,” Alex says, gesturing towards her body, indeed clad in her uniform. “You never wear anything else. What gives?”

She glances down at the suit ruefully, eyes catching on her house crest. “It’s my prison uniform,” Astra explains. A sorrowful smile graces her features, before she looks back at Alex with somewhat of a shrug. “The material doesn’t need to be washed, unlike your human clothing. It’s convenient.”

Alex appears surprised, likely from the fact that it’s a concept very similar to those orange overalls she’s seen in TV shows. While they get prisoner numbers like cattle, on Krypton they decided it to be appropriate to don the crest of your house. A reminder of those you dishonor and bring shame to. Perhaps Alex had thought it to be a battle suit of sorts, considering the context she’s seen it in; her men all wore the same suit, all on the battlefield. It’s an understandable assumption, albeit completely off-base.

Then she appears appeased, like that explains everything. As if the mere convenience of the material would be enough for Astra to still be wearing her prison attire, which essentially brands her a criminal to the public. Like needing to do laundry is worse than bearing the burden of your dishonored house.

And then her expression turns confused, likely having drawn a similar conclusion, albeit less detailed. “Wait, your prison uniform? Doesn’t that bother you?”

“It is the only piece of clothing I own that bears the crest of my house, the house of Ze. My last piece of Krypton.” The excuse slips out easily. It’s not untrue, but it is far from the sole reason she clings to it like a lifeline, nor is it the reason at the forefront of her mind.

It’s also not _the_ last piece of Krypton she has. There is the spy-beacon she shares with Kara, but that is something she prefers to keep between the two of them, no matter how close she and Alex have grown.

But Alex—brave, intelligent Alex—doesn’t let it simply lie there. She sees the non-answer for what it is; a diversion. “That doesn’t answer the question,” she says, before repeating, “Does walking around in a prison uniform bother you?”

There’s a strong urge to lie and say it doesn’t, to say that it doesn’t matter that she spent roughly the past three and a half decades in this portable version of prison, to say that it’s just a part of her now and that she hardly remembers it’s supposed to be a reminder of her sentencing. Of her sister’s betrayal. Of her failure.

It would be easy and much less painful to deny it all, but in the end Astra knows herself well enough to know the truth. Self-denial doesn’t suit her, and whether she tells Alex or not is irrelevant to the situation. She knows she wears it because she knows she doesn’t deserve anything more than the reminder of her faults and scars.

Astra sighs. What’s the point of keeping the truth from the woman she loves? “It does,” she admits, her eyes downcast and avoiding Alex’s revealing eyes. She doesn’t have the strength to see the response. “It serves as a reminder. I have brought a dishonor upon my house that I cannot make up for, and my actions on Earth have been no better. I don’t deserve to be seen as anything other than a criminal.”

There is a silence, stretching for long nail-biting seconds. Her words were not spoken with sadness, but rather with conviction, despite the avoidance of Alex’s gaze. However after getting no response for this long, Astra has to know what is going on in Alex’s mind, at the very least get an idea of it. So she looks at Alex, finally, when she dares, when the burden of not knowing becomes bigger than the burden of facing her response.

Alex looks, simply put, utterly dumbfounded.

“Alex?”

The prompting clears something in her gaze, and her eyes are now fully focused on Astra. Her expression sharpens. “Bullshit.”

Astra’s features darken and she clenches her jaw. This is what she gets for being completely honest about her feelings for once.

But Alex continues. “What you did is not irredeemable. Did you try something really messed up? Yes. Twice.” Astra drops her head at that, a sense of shame being overbearing. “But you didn’t do it because you wanted power or destruction or whatever selfish reasons people have. You did it because you tried to save two entire _planets_.”

She licks her lip uncertainly. Once upon a time that was exactly the way she’d seen her actions; a means to an end, a necessary evil that would certainly end up with her imprisoned or worse, but a necessity nonetheless. Someone had to make the sacrifice and she was strong enough to make it. But that is the exact train of thought that had put her in this position, using the ends to justify the means, and she was wary at best to fall back into that way of thinking.

“You’ve done nothing this past year but try to help where you can. The DEO stopped viewing you as a hostile a long time ago and even the president pardoned you, Astra. Does any of that sound irredeemable to you?”

A desperation had crept into Alex’s voice, and it struck a chord somewhere deep inside Astra. Alex is looking at her with a similar desperation, searching her for something, but Astra can’t even begin to comprehend what she’s looking for. Alex is right, of course. They’ve forgiven her, and in the eyes of Earth she has redeemed herself, particularly after her aid during the Daxamite invasion.

But Krypton, Krypton will never be able to forgive her, for she failed to save it.

Abruptly, Alex stands up from the couch, her book long since abandoned. “Come with me.”

Astra frowns, but she closes her book regardless—no book marker, she’ll remember she left off on the second paragraph of page 169–and warily gets to her feet. “Where to?”

“The mall,” Alex announces. “We’re going to get you out of that prison uniform.”

“But—“

“Nuh-uh, this is happening whether you want it to or not. Doctor’s orders.” Her gaze softens then. “You deserve to heal, Astra. It’s time you stop punishing yourself for failing an impossible task.”

And really, Astra wants to argue, but perhaps Alex is right. She is a doctor, after all.


End file.
